“Just how well did you know her?” Bertha asked.
“Oh, quite well — in a way — just by talking with her, though.”
“Just when she’d stop on the street?”
“That’s right.”
“Not much chance to establish an intimate friendship,” Bertha said musingly.
“Oh, we really talked quite a bit, but just a few words at a time. She was one of the brightest spots in my day, and she knew it. Well, when she didn’t call me, I called again and asked for Miss Dell and the person who answered the phone wanted to know if I was a friend of hers and said she was busy. I remember I tried to be funny. I said I was a man who had never seen her in his life and never expected to. Well, they called her to the telephone, and I said, ‘Hello, Miss Dell, this is your blind friend. I wanted to thank you for the music box.’ She said, ‘What music box?’ and I told her the music box she had sent to her friend, the blind beggar. She told me then that she had sent me flowers and was too busy to talk, and hung up. I’ve been wondering if that accident hadn’t affected her memory so she couldn’t remember things, but for some reason she didn’t want people to know about it because there was something she had to say she remembered. Maybe she was a witness to some contract, or perhaps she may have known—”
“Wait a minute,” Bertha interrupted. “Are you certain she sent you the music box?”
“Oh yes. She’s the only one I had ever talked with and told about how much I liked them. I thought perhaps she was injured more seriously than she realized, so I determined to go to her—”
“How did she sound on the telephone? Like her usual self?”
“No. Her voice was strained and harsh. She’s really not right mentally. Her memory—”
“Did you tell all this to Bollman?”
“What?”
“About the telephone call and the music box and Josephine losing her memory.”
“Let me see. Yes — I guess I did.”
Bertha was excited now.
“You got the music box right after she’d been hurt, is that right?”
“Yes — within a day or two.”
“And how did it come?”
“A messenger brought it to me.”
“And where did the messenger say he was from?”
“From the store that sold it, some antique dealer. I’ve forgotten the name. He said he’d received instructions to deliver it to me. He said he’d been holding it for a young lady who had paid a deposit on it and who had just recently completed—”
“You told this to Bollman? To whom else did you tell it?”
“To Thinwell, the man who drives me around and—”
“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha exclaimed, jumping to her feet.
“What’s the matter?” Kosling asked.
“Of all the numskulls, of all the thick-pated Dumb Doras!”
“Who?”
“Me.”
“I don’t get it,” Kosling said.
“Any label on that music box, any place that would indicate the dealer, anything that—”
“I wouldn’t know,” Kosling said. “I am familiar with its appearance only through the sense of touch. It’s strange, you asking who else I’d told about being afraid Josephine Dell had lost her memory because of that accident. I remember now Jerry Bollman asked me that same question.”
“You told him you’d talked with Thinwell?”
“Yes. I have a doctor friend and Thinwell suggested I take him and go to see Miss Dell personally and ask her questions without letting on that the man with me was a doctor — but first I should make absolutely certain that she was the one who had sent me that music box. Thinwell said that it just might have been someone else. But I don’t see how it could have been. No, I’d never told anyone else about—”
“There was no note with the music box?” Bertha asked.
“No. The note was with the flowers. The music box was just delivered like I said, without any note.”
Bertha started excitedly for the door, caught herself, turned back, stretched, yawned deliberately, and said, “Well, after all, I guess you’ve gone over things until you’re tired. What do you say we turn in?”
“Wasn’t there something in what I just said, something that made you excited?”
“Oh, I thought there was for a while,” Bertha said, yawning again, “but I guess it’s all a false alarm. Don’t know what she paid for the music box, do you?”
“No, I don’t, but I think it was rather a large sum. It’s a very beautiful piece, and there’s painting on it. Some kind of landscape painting done in oils.”
“Ever had that painting described to you?”
“No, I’ve just felt it with my fingers.”
Bertha sucked in another prodigious yawn.
“Well, I’m going to sleep. Do you like to sleep late in the morning?”
“Well, yes.”
“I don’t usually get up before nine or nine-thirty,” Bertha said. “That isn’t too late for you, is it?”
“The way I feel now, I could sleep the clock around.”
“Well, go ahead and get a good might’s sleep,” Bertha told him. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Bertha guided him through the door of the connecting bath, helped him off with the woman’s clothes, piloted him around the room until he had the general lay of things, left his cane by his bed where he could reach it, and then said, “Well, sleep tight. I’ll go grab some shut-eye.”
She walked through the connecting bathroom, closed the door, listened for a moment, then grabbed her hat and coat, moved cautiously across the room, tiptoed down the corridor to the elevator, and ten minutes later was tearing madly along the road to Los Angeles.
It wasn’t until she had passed Pomona that she suddenly realized she was doing exactly what Jerry Bollman had been doing some twenty-four hours previously — and probably for the same purpose. And now Jerry Bollman was stretched out on a slab.
Chapter XXVI
Dim-out regulations were in effect. At the crest of the hill Bertha snapped her lights over to dim parking and crawled along at a conservative fifteen miles an hour. She swung her car in close to the curb, shut off the motor, and listened. She could hear nothing save the little night noises which had not as yet been frightened into silence: the chirping of crickets; the shrill chorus of frogs; and several other mysterious, unidentified noises of the night which are never heard near the more populous centers.
Bertha produced her pocket flashlight. By the aid of the weird, indistinct illumination, as intangible as pale moonlight, she found her way up the walk to the house.
The bungalow loomed suddenly before her, a dark silhouette. She followed the walk with the guide rail running along it, came to the porch, climbed the steps, and paused. The door was tightly closed. This would be the work of the officers. Bertha wondered whether it had been locked.
She tried the knob. The door was locked.
Bertha’s flashlight showed her, after some difficulty in getting it properly centered, that there was no key on the inside of the door. The police then must have put on a night latch or have closed and locked the door.
Bertha had a bunch of skeleton keys in her purse. She knew they constituted a dangerous possession, but they frequently came in very handy, and Bertha was not one to hesitate over something she wanted badly enough.
A skeleton key clicked in the lock. She tried three in succession. It was the fourth that unlatched the door.
Bertha Cool pushed the door open, then stood perfectly still, waiting to see if the dark interior of the house offered anything of menace.
She heard no sound. Her flashlight showed her nothing, although she mechanically depressed the beam over towards the left-hand corner in order to see if the sinister red stains were still on the carpet. They were.